Millennium Witch.

Chapter 25 - 25 - Past Events of Civilization

"I was so scared! I almost died!"

"Holy crap, we actually have a real 'mage' here!"

Passing through the dark, damp, and massive drainage pipes, they arrived at a secluded shoreline on the other side of the Scrap Iron Avenue. The boys and girls, who had survived the ordeal, breathed a sigh of relief here, and then turned their shocked and complicated gazes to Rosalind, who was walking at the front.

They were all elite students at Black Tower High School, so they naturally knew how incredible this level of spellcasting was. Even third-year students would never have been able to escape with them in that situation.

"Can we keep this a secret?" Rosalyn winked at them and gestured for them to be quiet.

Hans, Marie, and Briel all nodded hastily. They had been frightened enough today, and their only thought at that moment was to get back to their safe house immediately.

"Damn those vicious dogs! They ruined my puppet! When I get home, I'm going to tell my parents. I'll make them pay..." Briel muttered bitterly to herself.

"What's next?" a young follower asked timidly, glancing nervously at the dimly lit coastline.

"Let's move forward. We're still too close here. Let's avoid this area for a while," Hans said.

This path, discovered during Rosalind's trio's recent exploration, leads to an old seaside village. It's a place rarely visited by gangsters or tourists, inhabited only by a few scattered elderly people awaiting the end of their lives.

To escape the pressure from the gang, the six ventured deeper into the area and soon came across a wooden house by the sea. An elderly man with gray hair was fishing not far away, and when he saw them, he smiled and nodded.

"Grandpa Watt!" Rosalind waved, her gesture and cry startling several seagulls.

As they got closer, the old man named Watt squinted and smiled, "Oh, you've brought a new friend. Catching fish here again today? Or are you craving some 'crispy silkworm pupae'?"

“No, no, no…no need.” Rosalyn quickly declined. The “crispy pupa” that the old man Watt mentioned was actually a local, plump white worm, as thick as two fingers. After being roasted, it would shrink and become a crispy, salty food.

Aside from the elderly on Scrap Iron Avenue, very few young people in Blackwater would eat this terrifying-looking food; they don't even have the courage to try it.

“Crispy pupa? Poor... Old man, are you an indigenous person?” Briel asked in surprise.

Two hundred years ago, there was an island kingdom called the Kingdom of Ish, inhabited by local natives. Their most distinctive feature was that their skin was darker than that of mainlanders. They also developed local foods such as "crispy pupae" and had unique culture and beliefs.

However, with the colonization of the "Greater Eden Empire," the indigenous people were massacred, with only one in ten surviving. Many historical and cultural sites that once existed disappeared in this process, turning into dust crushed under the wheels of history.

Of course, in the course of the development of civilization, the Great Eden Empire was overthrown, and now there is the United States of New Eden, which is at least on the surface a democratic country.

Watt smiled and nodded, unperturbed by Briel's impolite address: "Here, and around Scrap Iron Avenue, the descendants of the kingdom should all be here. Some have also moved to Grey Harbor, and Luya City behind Mount Ish, though I'm not too familiar with that."

Just then, one of Briel's henchmen suddenly pointed in a direction and said, "What's that?"

The group looked over and discovered that it was located at the bottom of a cliff, with a place that looked like the entrance to a building.

“That’s the ‘Tide Church’,” Watt said.

"The Tide Church?" Rosalind, Hans, and Mary looked surprised. They had been here two or three times, but this was the first time they had ever seen one.

"The place where we used to worship the gods was hidden during high tide and could only be accessed during low tide. Now it's a ruin, and apart from archaeology enthusiasts, almost no one comes here," Watt chuckled.

"What god?" Mary asked. Most of the residents of Ish Island don't have any religious beliefs, but in the Origin Civilization, there are quite a few well-known religious forces, such as the "Temple of Mind" in Silver Mirror Continent and the "Church of the Tree God" in Emerald Continent.

"He was called 'the God of Twilight.' In modern mythology, he would be considered a demon god, but the islanders at the time believed him to be the embodiment of death and rebirth, so they worshipped him since the tribal era, a history that spans several thousand years," Watt said. "However, I don't know the specifics; I've only seen it in documentaries. That was a long time ago."

As he spoke, a trace of reminiscence appeared in the old man's eyes, as if he could see countless years ago, people coming and going in the Tide Church, orderly attending mass. At that time, the "magical revolution" led by magical technology had not yet begun, Ish Island had not yet been invaded, and the ancestors lived on this island in peace and tranquility for generations, like a paradise on earth.

...Rosalyn and the others stayed with old man Watt until evening. They were almost discovered by the gang, but thanks to Watt's deliberate misdirection, the gang did not find the boys and girls hiding in the woods and left quickly.

In the evening, after arriving home with Hans and Marie, Rosalyn returned to room 1809 and recounted the day's events in detail to her teacher. Finally, she asked expectantly, "...How was my performance today, teacher?"

“Arrogant, reckless, and disregarding the consequences,” Yvette said bluntly. “Also, let me know immediately next time. Even if this is a dream, if something unexpected happens, I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe in reality.”

“But! But I think I did it perfectly, teacher.” Rosalyn was unconvinced. She really didn’t believe that anyone else could have done better under those circumstances.

“But if you notify me, I can use you as a springboard to hack into the chips inside their bodies through network ports, to do all sorts of interference, or to operate nearby vehicles to ram them... Wouldn’t that be safer than you just dodging bullets on a skateboard?” Yvette retorted, her tone more stern than usual.

Rosalyn fell silent, opening her mouth but unable to refute—undoubtedly, the teacher was right, and she knew the teacher had such abilities, but at the time she only felt that the moment to show off had arrived, and she was completely unaware of the risks and foolishness lurking behind it.

What made her feel even more embarrassed and ashamed was that, on the way back, she had been expecting her teacher's reaction, fantasizing that she would be surprised and shocked by her student's growth, but she never expected that it was all just her wishful thinking.

After a long while, she finally recovered and stammered, "I'm sorry, teacher... I was wrong..."

Yvette hummed in agreement and said nothing more. As someone with a cool and aloof persona, she had already said enough, which she believed was enough to give the 12-year-old girl a gentle reminder not to rush into her rebellious phase.

……

After dinner, thinking about what Rosalyn had told her about the Tide Church, Yvette turned on the holographic screen again and began to collect information.

Unable to find information about the Silent War, she shifted her focus, speculating that the apocalypse might not necessarily be the work of the original civilization, and that in a world with magic, gods might exist.

What if God is in a bad mood and insists on bringing about the end of the world?

After searching through a range of studies on mainstream religions and mythologies, Yvette suddenly made a discovery.

It was a free research paper that explained that deities like the "God of Twilight" existed in various cultures of the Origin Star.

For example, the world-destroying demon god "Twilight Lord" in mainstream mythology, and the "Source of Destruction," "God of the End," and "Elegy of Doomsday" translated from some foreign mythologies, are all similar settings.

And what is very similar is that these demons, by their own power, destroyed God's heavenly kingdom "Garden of Eden" in their respective mythologies, forcing the newly born humans to hide in the cruel earthly world to make a living.

Of course, the description isn't entirely like that, but the plot is largely the same.

The reason for such a high degree of similarity in these processes is that experts in history and mythology agree that these legends are all highly related to the ancient civilization period 30,000 years ago.

The Origin Civilization knew very little about that prehistoric civilization from 30,000 years ago, and could only find clues from a few fossils, believing that it was a period when magical elements were highly abundant, with huge dragons roaming the sky and terrifying monsters walking on the earth.

At that time, humans could become powerful sorcerers simply through meditation, using their personal abilities to protect their tribes and establish tribes or even kingdoms.

But later, for some unknown reason, just like the dinosaur era on Earth, all the creatures of that era died out at some point, and the world entered the Dharma-ending Age.

This enormous, mysterious, and bizarre historical turning point gave rise to the image of the "Twilight Lord," a deity who mechanically descends to earth.

The so-called heavenly "Garden of Eden" is the most desired and beautiful spiritual sustenance for people in the Dharma-ending Age, who yearn for that high-magic era with abundant elements.

“A turning point… Could it be that the ancient civilization, which existed 3 years ago, was also destroyed because it encountered a mysterious ‘doomsday’?” Yvette murmured to herself, feeling that this sounded like a whole cycle of destiny.

　The second update today will be a little late.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)